In an important sense, oil has made us into who we are, by transforming societies, reshaping economic regimes, and infiltrating our everyday lives. Fred Buell examines the dynamics of oil exuberance and catastrophe in the context of boom-bust cycles, mass consumerism, and other aspects of what he calls “oil-electric capitalism.”

Where does capitalism stand today? If the system is crisis-ridden and hasn't delivered the goods to large sectors of the population, why aren't we in a revolutionary moment? And what has happened to the neoliberal version of capitalism that first emerged in the 1970s? Albena Azmanova contends that we've entered a new stage of capitalism, one in which a few are handed opportunities and the rest are made to shoulder the risks.

Getting rich off of global warming may seem like the ultimate cynical business plan. But corporations are hedging their bets on unchecked climate change and the opportunities it affords. Journalist McKenzie Funk reports about the very lucrative business to be made from the deleterious effects of climate change, from opened shipping lanes in the melting Arctic to newly exposed mineral deposits, from food production on previously inhospitable land to the sale of artificial snow to the Alps.

According to Alex Khasnabish, we're in the midst of a double crisis, one hammering the general population and the other affecting the work of radical activists. Khasnabish believes that the radical imagination, a collective process that animates social movements, must be nurtured and prioritized. He counterposes the radical imagination to capitalist imaginaries that are foisted on people desperately seeking economic security.

In Africa, corporations and nation-states are acquiring vast amounts of land, in a move reminiscent of classical imperialism. Sociologist Fouad Makki discusses the enclosure, or privatization, of land in countries like Ethiopia, with terrible social and ecological consequences. He traces the land rush to the global financial crisis, rising food prices, and the inner dynamics of capitalism itself. (Encore presentation.)

Prodigious amounts of usable and edible waste are produced by commercial enterprises. They, and the capitalist system, try to keep that waste out of public view. Alex Barnard and Marie Mourad discuss the politics of waste and describe efforts, by freegans and Disco Soupe and others, to recover and reclaim and, in some cases, live off of waste.